Some pluses from a minor game

"It’s sheer slackiness," said Kris Srikkanth, who, as a TV expert, shows the same cavalier attitude to language as he once did to batting technique. "Against England and Pakistan, the team concentrated. Now, just because they are playing against Kenya, they are showing slackiness."
And what slackiness it was! First they dropped at least five catches.Harbhajan Singh, at square leg, flailed his arms around as if he were catching butterflies. Dinesh Mongia, preferred to VVS Laxman because he is the better fielder, dropped a sitter at slip and then, as if to show his versatility, a sitter on the boundary. Even Mohammad Kaif, who gets away with his poor run with the bat on the ground that he saves runs in the field, made a hash of a regulation catch at cover.
And when it was our turn to bat, the batsmen seemed to be under instructions to make things as difficult and as tense as possible, so that the game didn’t become one-sided and boring. Perhaps it was something else. The Dutch showed it. And so did the Canadians, Namibians and now the Kenyans: underdogs have a fire in their belly, a fierce desire to succeed against the odds. When you are not carrying the burden of expectations; when your back is not bent with the weight of sponsorships; when you have no fear of failure you are light as a feather and do the astounding.
Never mind, now that we have won and the tension’s gone, we can acknowledge that things turned out for the best like so many other things did. For instance, by the law of averages Sachin Tendulkar had to fail, so it’s good that he failed against Kenya. Then, we needed to bat a bit under the lights and a small Kenyan total wouldn’t have allowed that. And best of all, Sourav Ganguly, in wretched form, played the innings of his life.
That’s a lot of pluses from what was to be the most minor of our matches. These are the consolations of philosophy, best learnt from the couch.